Tangrams- Peculiar Pieces

Ordinarily when I blog about some weird Victorian nugget, I write about its history, folklore  and occult connections. While we have some of that today; I thought it would be more fun and helpful to come up with excuses to make players solve tangrams puzzles. Last week, I introduced tangrams and why they make such a great handout for a role-playing game. Here are a bunch of adventure ideas ready for the Gamemaster to hand out the tans (the seven pieces of a tangram).

Adventure ideas

A secret club uses tangrams to keep out the uninitiated. Anyone entering must arrange a tangram into the shape known only to the clubs members. If they finish on the first try the doorman welcomes them in, otherwise the he bars the door.

A magician enchants stationary to hide messages. He writes his letter and cuts the paper into the seven tans. The pieces appear blank except for a number corresponding with a puzzle from a tangram book. The recipient receives their letter and looks up the puzzle. Once they arrange the pieces in the right formation the message appears.

A tangram puzzle could be the lock on a specially made safe. Arrange the tan’s into the right combination and the safe opens. If the safe is enchanted, different shapes could open on different contents.

Tangrams are not the only kind of dissection puzzle. An old manuscript credited to Archimedes lays out the Ostomachio, which roughly translates as “Bone Fight”. The Ostomachio is a square made of 14 pieces, similar to tangrams. Instead of paper, the Greeks made their puzzles of bone. So the ancient Greeks had a geometric puzzle called “Bone Fight” with pieces made from real bones. Do whatever you want with that.

In Victoriana, Heaven and Hell clash in a war of Chaos and Order. In this war the straight lines and geometric shapes of dissection puzzles could have a much greater significance than mortal amusements.

Tangrams quickly spread  across the globe from China in five short years. The hobby flared up like a plague in France, England, Germany and Denmark. Do tangram enthusiasts suffer from a viral compulsion to shuffle the tans around into new shapes? Does obsessive knowledge wait just under all those right angles dying to get out?

The plethora of possible shapes makes tangrams a possible source of coded communication. A woman sits in the park working on a tangram puzzle every afternoon. Some people walk by without a glance, but if you know what to look for, her tans code out secret messages for a covert group.

While most enthusiasts cut their tangrams out of paper, some could afford more polished products for their hobby. Tangram sets were made of glass, wood, silk, or ivory. The wealthy bought more expensive tangram kitsch, such as dishware and even furniture. In the 1840s, Chinese carpenters made a set of interlocking tables shaped like tans. They could be arranged like any tangram puzzle.

For the sake of making up adventures and building mysteries, anything can be a tangram set: floorboards, bricks, stained glass, children’s blocks, decorative panels, floor tiles, roof shingles, a cracked sidewalk, etc. etc.

A mysterious publisher sells books of tangram puzzles sinisterly designed to open the reader’s perception to new geometrical ideas. As they solve harder and harder puzzles, the solver’s mind learns new ways to combine everyday shapes and to find the gaps in reality.